


Phoenix

by hedda62



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 12:38:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedda62/pseuds/hedda62
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The seed had germinated in Finch's mind, and had been growing since into a strong but twisted plan of action.  Certainly he'd had it all thought out when he took down the volume again and slapped it on the desk in front of John.</i>
</p><p>"Cyrano de Bergerac," <i>he'd said.  "English translation.  You should read it," and then he'd walked away.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Phoenix

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fangirlishness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fangirlishness/gifts).



> Working title: ohmybrainwhy. A disturbing piece of whimsy that oozed its way out of a line in [The Three Graces](http://archiveofourown.org/works/726458) (but clearly takes place in a very different universe). I was _encouraged,_ not that I required very much prodding; hence the dedication. (Thank you. Really.)

Reese stared at the painting on the gallery wall, the wild lines and the bright colors, chaotic and messy and seeming more familiar the longer he gazed. He tilted his head slightly, and the memory popped: he'd left a corpse in that pose lying in a pool of blood behind a recreation center in Bulgaria.

He glanced at the woman next to him: thoughtful, her mouth twisted a little; what was she seeing that he couldn't? "A human figure," he said tentatively, and then, somehow encouraged by the quiet breathing in his right ear, he added, "On fire, I think. The shapes there, they're like… late Matisse." She turned the assessing look on him; he'd surprised her. "Except a lot uglier," he went on, and then on a whim told her about the dead body, though substituting the Bronx for Dobrich.

It didn't make her run away; it made her laugh. "I did wonder what you were thinking," she said. "And you're right; it didn't need to be ugly. That's just showing off." She leaned closer. "But don't tell Friedrich I said so; I don't want him to think I'm criticizing his taste, not if I'm trying to sell him my work."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Reese said, breathing in the subtle scent of perfume that clung to her. Jasmine, he thought. He hadn't meant to badmouth the painting. Not that he'd buy it to hang in his living room, but it compelled his notice, which he thought was what art tried to do, and he'd seen much more gruesome things in his time without flinching. Today, he'd felt like flinching a lot. "So did you want to look at anything else, or are we going to lunch now?" he said.

"Don't you have to get back to the precinct?"

"I have the afternoon off. Free as… a bird." _A finch, a wren, a crane._ He wasn't quite sure who he was meant to be, these days. Though as usual, he'd been given a name.

"Then let's sneak out before… oh, crap." She turned, smiling broadly. "Friedrich! We were just admiring your latest acquisition. This is my… new friend, Detective John Stills. I'm giving him a crash course in art appreciation."

"An honor to meet you, Detective. And" -- with an affectionate gesture, the gallery owner brushed back a strand of red hair and kissed the exposed pale cheek -- "so lovely as always to see you again, Grace."

*

They had sushi for lunch. Maybe it was all the art, but Reese found himself registering the shapes and colors in the neatly-turned rolls, instead of just gulping them down heedless: the balance of hue and taste, the rare instances where the chef had been lazy and the symmetry was off. Grace had that same kind of careful perfection about her, without seeming at all artificial. He'd always been a bit mystified by Finch's wardrobe, and now he wondered if the fondness for warm tones and patterns had been acquired from his former fiancée. It wasn't so much how she dressed as how she _was_ ; today she was in pale gray, which Reese wanted to think of as mourning wear and really couldn't. The glowing hair; the blue and green scarf; the earrings like drops of the ocean: they all went together in a way he couldn't grasp, but he knew it was beautiful.

He was inclined toward the simplicity of black and white, himself, but… "So let me ask your advice. What color tie do you think I should buy?"

As usual, he wasn't wearing one with his suit. She examined the blank spot on his neck, eyes lingering a moment too long, and then looked into his face. "Well, you can't go wrong by matching your eyes. They're a very handsome color. Here, the blue in my scarf is pretty much…"

She untied it and pulled it from around her neck, then quickly folded it into a long rectangle and put it to his throat. It was warm from her body. "Hold that," she said; their hands brushed before she let go, and Reese felt a familiar and unwelcome charge shocking through him. Grace searched in her purse and pulled out a small mirror. "See?" she said.

Reese gazed at his image. She was right about the blue; he had about six ties in that color already, that Finch had picked out for him. He saw, otherwise, a man aging too fast, always tired, a fading bruise on his jaw, tenseness showing around his mouth. "Thank you," he said, and shook the scarf's folds open as he handed it back. The blast of color was like spring exploding amid the austere wood-and-cream of the restaurant, the gray and black winter of Grace and John.

He touched her hand, decisive and terrified, and she laced her fingers between his and smiled.

*

"I can't do this," he told Harold that evening, sitting in a pool of light with the shadows of books all around them. "We have to stop."

"I'm not forcing you to do anything, Mr. Reese," Harold said primly, fingers flying over the keys as he skimmed and then altered the bank statements of their latest number. "I merely suggested that--"

"It wasn't a suggestion." _You asked. And I can't say no to you._ "I still don't know where you want me to go with this."

"You had a good time today." A bland statement of fact: not a question, no nuances.

"Sure. She's enjoyable company."

"Then I'd advise you to appreciate the moment."

"And how appreciative do you want me to get? I don't even know if I'm dating her or…" He took a deep breath and plunged into honesty. "If you are, in some screwed-up universe you invented. You were listening, today. If unusually quiet. And thank you for the package of art books, by the way. What's next, poetry?"

"She's fond of John Donne. And Emily Dickinson, but I wouldn't advise quoting those; both the content and the punctuation are wrong for the situation."

"All I know is you can sing them to 'The Yellow Rose of Texas.' And I don't sing. Finch… Harold. If I keep seeing her, this is going to get… tricky." Ugly, and wildly confusing, like that painting in the gallery. And weirdly attractive, in much the same way.

"I can coach you, if you like. Though by all accounts you can handle yourself just fine in such situations."

Reese sighed, not even bothering to wonder what "accounts" Finch meant. "I was thinking more that we'd have to fight a duel. But that's not the story you're telling, is it?"

He pointed to the book resting unobtrusively in the lower shelf of Finch's in-tray. When Finch had taken it off the shelf the week before, it had already been familiar, having formed part of one of last month's numbers. Probably the seed had germinated in Finch's mind then, and had been growing since into a strong but twisted plan of action. Certainly he'd had it all thought out when he took down the volume again and slapped it on the desk in front of John.

" _Cyrano de Bergerac,_ " he'd said. "English translation. You should read it," and then he'd walked away.

John had dutifully read the play, which had turned out gripping in parts, dense in others, and occasionally funny, but he hadn't entirely seized the point until Finch replaced his bookmark with a ticket to a Bach concert at Trinity Church, and he'd gone out of sheer curiosity, and seen Grace there. With Carter's help, they had already -- "just in case," Finch had said -- created a solid identity out of Detective Stills's ghostly ID badge, with John's own first name and an affiliation that would stand up to investigation. So he didn't need to worry when Grace recognized him, and somewhere in the relaxed chatting that followed, Finch's purpose landed on him like a bruiser in the middle of a bar fight. He staggered, and then he felt sick, and then he asked Grace if she'd care for a drink.

"I finished it," he said now. "They're both dead by the end. Christian" -- he tapped his own chest -- "and Cyrano" -- pointing at Finch.

"And what did I say to you when we first met, Mr. Reese?" Finch said, his voice thin and cold.

"Yeah, and I was fine with that. But I don't think there's any point to jinxing it by pretending we're living out some romantic tragedy. And just because Roxane survives it all, that doesn't mean Grace will. Cyrano wasn't shy about being obnoxious to people with power, but he hadn't created a super-secret computer that makes the government want to kill everyone who knows about it. Why am I not _just_ as dangerous for her as you are?"

Finch was silent, his fingers still now, staring at the screen but clearly not seeing the data on it. "Unless," Reese went on after a moment, "you just mean me to show her a good time and then vanish mysteriously. Which isn't very nice." _Or fair. Or possible._

"Well, I'm sure you'll come up with something," Finch said vaguely.

"So you want me to keep the date I made with her for Thursday?"

"That is entirely up to you, of course." And now Finch turned toward him and made a horrible grimace that Reese thought was supposed to be a smile. "But you do like her. You do find her attractive."

 _God._ "Yes. She's very… she's lovely. If I'd met her under other circumstances…"

"The circumstances are what we make of them, Mr. Reese. If you'd like to borrow some poetry books…"

"No, thanks. I'll manage."

*

He kissed her for the first time after dinner Thursday evening. His nerves stretched to snapping point, he'd gulped down too much wine before being confronted by the artistically-arranged but decidedly small portion of pork loin and carrot-parsnip puree, and he was a little drunk on Grace's company as well. Prodding her about her past with the hope of revealing an unchanging longing for Harold, he'd instead brought out all the passion for creation that he suspected had attracted Harold to her in the first place; clearly the two of them had that in common. _She loves her work,_ he caught himself thinking at one point, and winced; but it was true.

Walking away from the restaurant, they turned a corner into a wind tunnel; the air was still touched by winter and the blast made Grace shriek. Instinctively, as if she were being attacked, he pulled her back into shelter again, spotting lines of retreat until he realized that no retreat was possible; she was laughing at him, his chivalry complex and his hair-trigger response, and he couldn't stop himself. Her mouth was cold, and then warm.

"Oh," she said when he released her, and then, "Oh," again, sad and giddy at once.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have--"

"No, it's… I _liked_ it," and the surprise in her voice made him think of Harold again: Harold laughing at something Bear had done when he thought John was too busy to notice; Harold watching John with a wondering expression on his face. "I'm just… it's been…"

"It's been a while for me too," he said; in some sense it was the truth.

"I think… I need some time to think about this," Grace told him. "If you wouldn't mind…"

He shook his head, hailed her a taxi, wished her goodnight, and started back to his loft. And then he changed his mind, and headed for the Library.

Harold was sitting in the moonlight oasis of screen-glow again, working on a project for one of his other lives; there was no number tonight. The muscles of his neck tensed visibly when John came in, but his voice was perfectly calm.

"Are you all right, Mr. Reese?" he said.

"Am _I_ …" He slumped down in a chair, all his energy pooling at his feet. "I just kissed your fiancée. How all right do you think I can possibly be?"

"Well," Harold said with grim enthusiasm, "if I recall clearly, pretty darn--"

"Damn it. Stop. You can't be… are you getting _off_ on this?"

"Your advance was rather abbreviated, so I can't say there was actually the opportunity."

It sounded like a joke, but… "Better luck next time?"

"Do we believe in luck? I've never been sure."

"Not really in the mood for philosophical discussions, Harold. Do you want me to get lucky, that's the question. And if I do…" _What about us? What happens to the world we've built together?_

"This isn't all a subtle plan to have you murdered out of jealousy and revenge, if that's what you're wondering."

"Then _why?_ " Harold was silent, though John thought he'd probably say something eventually. But somehow he couldn't help pressing on. "Cyrano didn't think Roxane would want him, so he put Christian in the middle. Is that what's going on here? Because I think Grace has already proved she wants you. And she's… a _good_ person. She won't think less of you because of…" He gestured at Harold's body. "If you go to her now, she'll forget all about me."

"You're not very forgettable, Mr. Reese."

"I'm not you." The quick, flashing mind; the creative spirit unafraid of godlike scope; the precision and the poetry.

"Well," Harold said, and then didn't finish his thought. After a moment he added, "Perhaps that's the point."

John wanted to shake him, to force out an explanation; instead he said, "Cyrano was kind of an idiot, you know. He had a lot going for him."

"Hm. You know what they say about men with big noses," and John really was going to shake him this time, when the phone rang.

*

The next several days were swallowed by a complicated, fatiguing case that kept them awake for twenty-four-hour shifts and gave Reese no time to contact Grace even if he'd felt able to. She didn't call him either. But then, so coincidentally with the moment they turned the averted murder over to Carter to wrap up that his suspicions were aroused, he got a text. Grace had discovered a new Thai place, great food in -- he grinned to himself -- generous portions: it was an overture so tentative and so bold he could hear the tremor in her voice through his fingers. Yes, he answered, he was free tomorrow; they exchanged details and then he sat down on the nearest bench in the chill of a unforgiving breeze and put his hands over his face, wanting to be with her now, wanting to run away to the ends of the earth.

But he had work to do. One of the perps in the case, a background villain who couldn't be touched by the law, needed a little additional pressure placed on him. Instead of finding some large stones or heavy bars of iron, Reese went to Zoe.

She was delighted to oblige, and when they'd swallowed the first set of drinks and concocted a plan, he made ready to leave; she put a hand on his leg, holding him to the bar stool.

"What's the matter?" she said.

"Nothing."

"Come on, John. From the faces you've been making, either someone's died or you're recovering from a gunshot wound, or…"

"There's a woman," he said, and Zoe snorted.

"Even the best of us fall sometime," she said. "You want to talk about it?" and, surprisingly, he did.

He told her everything, except about the Machine, and she listened. At the end, she paused and then said conversationally, "I think I might kill Harold."

"That wouldn't actually help," John said.

"No. I guess you'd still feel obliged, wouldn't you? Well, I don't have any words of wisdom for you; if you're accepting Harold's terms, you're pretty much screwed, so you might as well… lie back and enjoy it." He couldn't help a small groan escaping him; she patted his thigh. "I thought not," she said. "I could probably get you out of it. A few words in Grace's ear about what a bastard you are… or we could pull the same stunt Harold pulled with you and Maxine, except make it obvious you and I are currently sleeping together."

He shook his head. Now her hand made circles on his leg; she said, "Speaking of which, if you're looking for a way to work off some tension before the big night…" She watched him bite his lip, added dryly, "Or we could drink and play poker. I'm not going to say it's all the same to me, but I have nothing else planned this evening, and I enjoy your company. But if you're suffering an attack of fidelity already, then I'd say it's too late, and I'll just wish you the best." She gave him a squeeze and let go. "Of course you might want to consider who you're being faithful to. And John? If it's Grace who ends up getting screwed in all this, in any way but the fun one, I may have to kill _you._ So watch it."

"You're such a comfort," he said, and she flashed him a smile and left. He followed her with his eyes as she wove through the crowd, pulling her coat tight around her shoulders, and then he ordered another drink.

*

Grace was a good judge of restaurants; mindful of Zoe's advice, John did let himself enjoy the food, though he stayed away from booze entirely. He started out the evening jumpy and irritable and trying hard not to show it, and then about halfway through the appetizers Grace got up abruptly, came over to his side of the table, kissed him on his peanut-crusted-tuna-filled mouth and on the forehead, and seated herself again.

"I just wanted you to know," she said, and then started talking about coriander.

Harold stirred into life in John's ear a few minutes later, in the middle of a story about Grace's reaction to finding baby octopuses on the rim of her soup bowl: a gentle, reminiscent chuckle. "And it went flying," Grace was saying, "and hit…" She stopped.

"Harold?" said John, and then to her alarmed glance, "Your fiancé. You showed me his photo, when we first met. I was just… assuming, I guess."

"Yes. It was him." Her mouth quirked and trembled, and then she went on, "The octopus landed in his lap, and he… was pretty startled."

"Screamed like a little girl," Harold corrected. His mouth sounded occupied; he was eating dinner with them.

"I'd probably have tried to shoot it," John said, trying to smile. "Occupational hazard."

"Mm. Have you… done a lot of shooting?"

"Between the Army and the police force, yes. Does it bother you?"

"No. No, it doesn't." She sounded surprised at herself.

"Grace… you should know," he began, and ignoring Harold's "Mr. Reese, I don't think--" went on, "I've killed people. And hurt them on purpose, and…"

"I'm sure you did it because you had to."

Her voice had such _faith_ in it; it was hard to disillusion her, but necessary. "Not always," he said. "Sometimes I did it because I was scared. And sometimes because I wanted to. I'm trying to be better, but… I needed you to know."

"Thank you for being honest," she said, and he wanted to cry out to her just how far away he was from honesty, but he nodded instead. "If I can help," she added, "though I don't know how. But just ask."

It took him half a minute to trust his voice. "Thank you. It would be wrong to burden you--"

"John, there's nothing that could make me… I really want to get to know you better. And then we'll see, won't we?"

He could hear Harold breathing in his ear, a little faster than normal. "Yes, we will," he said.

"So tell me about your work," she said, and he accepted inevitability and Carter's mantle, and told her about Travis and Darren McGrady. Harold reminded him of details as he went along and he added them in; it felt disconcertingly natural, if that was possible. Having ended on a marginally funny note with Fusco's shooting, he then went on to wrestle some other more-or-less-true and entertaining stories out of conversations he'd had with the two detectives.

Grace contributed some tales from the children's shelter she volunteered for, and told him about the homeless man she'd taken to exchanging greetings with as she walked in the park, until one day he wasn't there anymore, and it was only when she investigated and found that he'd died that she learned he'd once been a well-known violinist. And then John heard himself saying, "I was homeless, for a while."

"Really? When?"

Flirting with the truth suddenly stopped being easy; he could make the timeline work, but he couldn't summon up a substitute for the hopeless need, the memory of watching his face emerge from concealment as he shaved in the mirror, and the embracing echo of Harold's words. _I know exactly everything about you._

"It was when I first came to New York," he said, "but I'd rather not talk about it." Grace lifted a hand in apology; he rode over her, contradicting himself. "Someone very important to me pulled me out of indifference, out of despair, and gave me a purpose. Even though I didn't deserve one. It's not always comfortable; sometimes I wish I was back on the street, where everything was simple and about survival." Though he'd been sideswiped by gratitude, even there. "But I'm… cleaner, now. Not just because I take regular showers." She smiled, encouraging him: it was sunlight and flowers and everything that wasn't Queensbridge Park in the mist, and it felt just the same. "It's a clean like going through fire; like someone believes in you down to your bones; like you never want to be dirty again. It's…" He laughed quietly. "It's grace. That's what I've been given." Reaching over the drunken noodles and the candle flame, he clasped her hand. "It would be too much to ask for the same gift twice."

"It seems too much," she said a little vaguely, rubbing his thumb with her own, "but I'm not sure it is." And then she looked up, right into his eyes.

Harold's breath was rough in his ear; he was all at once desperate to finish this one way or another. "Let's get out of here," he said, threw enough money on the table to cover the bill twice over, and helped Grace on with her coat, his hands trembling with urgency.

He made it as far as the car before giving in, and then he pressed her against the cold metal and held her there, devouring her mouth, feeling her body through all the layers between them. She kissed him back avidly: no hesitation; whispering his name as she touched his face with lips and gloved fingers. The echo in his right ear was less easily audible, but it was there. "Come home with me," he murmured. "Please."

"No," she said. "My place." He pulled away from her, shivering hard; it was a good choice on her part, for safety and security, and she couldn't know how he'd feel about making love to her in the house she'd shared with Harold. Not that it would be any different, really, going to the loft; he nodded, and they got into the car.

"You remember where I live?" she said.

"Yes." _Yes._ "Grace, if you're not sure about this…"

"I'm sure, John."

"If you're still getting over--"

"I am. I always will be. I don't care. It's time."

"They say that time assuages," sang a little voice in his ear as he started the car. "Time never did assuage. An actual suffering strengthens, as sinews do, with age." John had time to think _what the hell, Harold?_ before the voice added, "I told you Emily Dickinson was wrong for the situation. Let's find something more appropriate," and he was sure he could hear pages flipping.

They rode in silence for a while -- all the traffic lights were green -- and then Harold's voice chimed in again. "'Hail, Bishop Valentine, whose day this is,' it's over a month later, in fact, but we were otherwise occupied at the time, 'all the air is thy diocese, and all the chirping choristers and other birds are thy parishioners…'"

It was strangely comforting to have Harold vocal instead of quiet; he sounded a bit drunk, rambling on through the lines of poetry. "'Till now, thou warmd'st with multiplying loves, two larks, two sparrows, or two doves. All that is nothing unto this, for thou this day couplest two phoenixes--'"

"Phoenixes," John said aloud, the implied _seriously, Harold?_ attached. Grace stirred in the seat next to him.

"'Come forth, come forth, and as one glorious flame, meeting another, grows the same.' John Donne," she said, satisfaction in her voice, and then, "I'm sorry, I was just… you probably weren't thinking…"

"I was thinking pretty much that," he said. _Clean like going through fire._ "And about the desert."

"Tell me about the desert, John," she said, and he did, and Harold murmured on in his ear, _Sahara is too little price to pay for thy right hand,_ and he reached for Grace's and kissed its palm. Out of sequence, the light ahead went red; Harold whispered, "Not faint canaries, but ambrosial," and John found Grace's lips until a long horn sounded behind them and the signal was green again.

They didn't have far to go; he would have been happy driving to Poughkeepsie, to Albuquerque, to Peru, and Washington Square was both too close and too distant a goal. He found a parking space nearly in front of her door, suspiciously convenient. Signaling her to wait, he checked the street before opening her door, and they went quickly up to the house and inside.

It all looked much the same, though dark instead of light. The photograph was still there. She took his coat, hung up her own, said breathlessly, "Would you… like a drink or something?"

"No."

"Me neither," she said, and put her arms around his neck.

He held her away, his heart pounding, and said, "If you're _sure_ …"

"Yes. Or no. I don't want to be sure; I don't want to be safe. What did you say? Out of indifference and despair. It could be a wonderful thing, burning up like a phoenix. And I've been cold for too long."

"You don't know me. I could be lying to you about everything." _I could be impersonating a police officer. I could be using the name of a dead man, a man I shot and killed myself. I could be here under pretenses so false I can't even begin to count the untruths._

"And I don't care if you are; I know it's wrong, but… I've been lied to before, and told the truth at the same time, and… you're telling me _a_ truth. Bodies don't lie. And besides," she added, hands going to his throat, "I know you respect me, because you took my advice about the tie. It's a lovely blue. Can I take it off?"

"Yes," he whispered, and let her unknot the tie Harold had given him.

He couldn't think after that, couldn't manage qualms, could do nothing but follow her into the bedroom, touching, kissing, unbuttoning, discovering skin, finding response. _Bodies don't lie._ His was speaking fervently, in tune with Cyrano in his ear: _Love, I love beyond breath, beyond reason… A moment made immortal, with a rush of wings unseen._ There was no difference in the end, it seemed, between his body and Harold's, between direction and action, between purpose and fulfillment. He'd loved Grace for years; he'd known her a week; it didn't matter. He was hers, and he was Harold's, and there were three of them in the bed.

Ecstasy tugged at him, and with it a tide of anger, and at the last second, hanging on by his fingernails, he gritted out, "You'd want him. If he came back. If he wasn't dead," and she breathed, "Yes." And then he touched her again, to put her over the edge, and she closed her eyes and called out nobody's name and he followed her, burning, glorious, whole.

Harold was sobbing; Harold was saying something dry and inappropriately formal: he couldn't tell which. "Oh. _My._ Yes," Grace said; she sounded so pleased with herself that John couldn't help laughing.

"Up to expectations?" he said.

"Oh, John." They were lying on their backs; she nuzzled up close to his shoulder. "Spend the night and let's do it again in the morning; how's that for an answer?"

 _Spend the night in Harold's bed,_ he had time to think, and then from somewhere on the floor his phone buzzed: a text. For the sake of appearances, he got up and read it, his skin prickling with cold and the gut-dropping realization of what he'd done.

 _You're needed,_ the text said. He didn't think Harold had sent it.

"I have to go to work," he told Grace.

"Well," she said, resigned, "at least it was well-timed." She was lovely against the sheets, icy pale in the dim light; he tried not to see the imagined pool of blood spreading around her. "Call me," she said.

He went back to the bed and kissed her. "I will. As soon as I can. Let's just go somewhere and talk, then."

"I'd like that. And more of this, too. Did you… I thought you asked me a question."

"You answered it," he said. "Thank you."

*

Harold was in the Library, of course. Bear came over as John let himself in, wagged his tail and then growled a little: he sympathized with the contradictory feelings.

"If you're going to shoot me," he said as he approached Harold on the sofa, "I wish you'd do it now and get it over with."

"Now why ever would I do that, Mr. Reese?" Harold said. He sounded tired.

"No reason. Oh, and you might manage to call me John, considering we've just been in bed together."

"John." He seemed to taste the name, trying it out as if he'd never uttered it before. "And well, you did move on that quite quickly, but 'together' would be an exaggeration of--"

"Not really." Joining Harold on the sofa wasn't tempting; he collapsed in an armchair instead. "But I suppose it isn't much different from what we've been doing all along. Using my body to do enjoyable things in your service while you talk in my ear."

"John--"

"Putting my life in your hands. And… my soul, I suppose, if I have one. Willingly."

"Oh."

"As if you didn't know that. You know everything about me. And you heard what I said, at the restaurant. You've heard me say it before."

"Yes."

"I mean it." He made sure Harold understood, and then he went on, "Thank you for introducing me to Grace."

"Yes. Well," and Harold's mouth curved just slightly; he was amused. "She'll sleep now," he said, "very soundly, I should imagine, and by morning she'll have forgotten what you said. It was incautious in the extreme--"

"If she forgets, I'll remind her again. I'm not going to keep lying."

"John, I would much prefer that you--"

"Harold, if she's going to be sleeping with you, wouldn't you rather she knows it? Maybe I'll start reciting poetry in bed--"

Harold laughed. "Who do you think I am?" he said. "Cyrano de Bergerac?"

"I don't know; what's French for finch?"

"I can find other people's words," Harold said, ignoring him. "But not always my own. And I was never good enough for Grace. Never had your honesty, your integrity; all I had was money and a talent for puzzles. The two people I love most in the world," he went on, "deserve each other."

John closed his eyes; he hadn't expected to hear the word again tonight. "It doesn't work that way," he said, opening them. "And I'm not good enough either. And I'm not sure Grace is, for that matter."

"She's perfect," said Harold. He paused, then added, "Do you know how I met Grace to begin with? The Machine chose her for me. Drew my attention to her. Set us up."

"Oh, so it is a dating service after all. I'd been wondering. So you're trying to prove to the Machine it was wrong? I thought that never happened."

"The Machine chose you, too."

"Well, in that case--"

"Perhaps it's better than I am at long-term thinking."

Their lives would be in danger less often if that were true, John thought; but the point wasn't worth arguing. "So you think I'm more virtuous than you for being honest, but then you want me to keep lying. Consistent, Finch. Don't you think Grace should know how you popped into her life? And out of it. Love implies trust. I'd think."

John watched Harold struggle with what to say, wondering if he'd bring up Jessica, wondering if he'd thought this through at all, or just let himself be uncharacteristically swept along by feeling. Or perhaps he was still reacting to a wrong choice made years ago, trying to make it right, or trying to reverse it. _Which choice, Harold? Loving her, or letting her go?_

Finally, when Harold kept not saying anything, John got up and went over to the sofa, sitting down and putting his arms around his friend. It was the most intimate they'd ever been physically, except when one of them had been hurt or likely to die. "I'm here," he said. "Feel like hitting me? Or you can cry on me or kiss me instead. I don't think it really matters which. Do it, and then we have to talk about Grace. Because one of us is going to have to tell her the truth."

Harold withdrew from John's embrace, like a turtle in reverse. "It's going to be rather awkward," he said.

"We've handled 'imminent body-pulverizing explosion.' I think we can handle 'awkward.' We may both get slapped around some, but we're used to that too. At least I am."

"Grace doesn't slap. She internalizes."

"Huh. I got the impression she has lots of slapping potential. She certainly has courage, or she would have taken one look at me and run in the other direction. I think she'd enjoy being an asset, Harold."

Harold squeezed his eyes shut. "And when Root comes after her? Or Alicia Corwin's old associates? Or anyone else we annoy?"

"Then we'll be there to help." Harold still didn't want to face reality; John tried to soften it a little. "She can always choose to go away and never see you again." That opened the eyes; Harold gave him an oh-very-funny look that John found extremely promising. "There are worse ways to say 'I love you,'" he went on, "than agreeing that you have the right to die for each other. It's pretty much the only way I've learned how to say it. You have a lot more poetry at your disposal. But I liked the phoenixes."

"There's only one phoenix at a time," Harold said. "That was the point, that marriage unites. Or… substitutes thereof. One plus one equals one: a mathematical impossibility." He paused. "One plus one plus one, as well, of course."

"The Machine will feel left out, Harold."

He got another very dry look in response. "The Machine deals with much larger number sets, as a rule. It does… make exceptions."

"For people it loves. That's a really disturbing idea. But I suppose I should be used to those by now." While he was on the subject, he took up both of Harold's hands, and kissed them one at a time. "You'd better get some sleep," he advised. "So you can be wide awake for your resurrection."

He could see Harold begin to say _but I haven't decided!_ and then give up the effort. "Yes, John," he said instead. "And you sleep well too."

**Author's Note:**

> I swore I wasn't going to, but... continued in [Halcyon](http://archiveofourown.org/works/746989).


End file.
